The S. in A.S.K.

Welcome back! I hope you had a great implementation week and spent it practicing self-loyalty in whatever form you decided. 

We are starting a new theme this week—body! As a refresher, I designed the course to look at four themes in 3 different spirals. We will visit themes of Beliefs, Feelings, Body, and Self-loyalty 3 different times to go deeper each time. So far, we have done two themes, Beliefs and Feelings, and this week we are starting with body. 

Over the next 2 weeks, we will be talking about why our bodies are so important in treating anxiety, how to overcome our resistance to slowing down and how anxiety shows up in our bodies. 

Today I want to re-visit the idea of S. In A.S.K. Slow Down and Get into Your Body. Slowing down and getting into your body is not easy for me. In fact, I have spent most of my life at war with my body. 

I remember a moment when as I turned the corner from the stairway to the kitchen, I was already talking a million miles a minute, sharing everything I was stressed about. A deadline I was close to missing, a client call that hadn't gone well, and a difficult conversation with my brother. 

My husband lovingly grabbed my shoulders and said, "Honey, I think you need to take a deep breath."

What?!? As I resisted the urge to punch my husband in the face, I thought to myself, take a deep breath! That is the LAST thing I want to do.

This was a common scenario in our house, me coming downstairs to share my stress and anxiety and my husband trying his hardest to help by reminding me to take a deep breath.

He didn't mean to anger me to the point of violence (ha!). He meant it as a kind, loving activity that he knows works in decreasing anxiety, but for me, taking a deep breath when I am anxious is torture.

I have a visceral response to someone telling me to slow down and get into my body. I have been told that for YEARS. Slow down, and take a deep breath. Can you relate?

"You might be wondering, Ok Nancy, why did you create the acronym ASK when you hated and avoided Acknowledging your feelings, and now you have a visceral reaction to getting into your body?" Like with my feelings, I KNEW getting into my body was key, but it is NOT my first response. I would rather treat my body like a machine and live from the head up. 

When we can slow down and get into our bodies, we change our perspective. By changing our physical presence, we can see more options, and the last step of A.S.K., K. Kindly pull back to see the big picture happens with more ease.

When I share this step with my clients, their eyes glaze over, and I can almost hear them internally saying, Yeah, yeah, get into your body. It is a similar reaction to the idea of feeling your feelings. Helpful but the LAST thing you want to do. 

One of the issues with High Functioning Anxiety is that slowing down is HARD. To slow down requires us to work against our anxiety and our drive, and our push push push mentality. (This pull is so strong I wanted to punch my husband, whom I adore!) 

A big shift for me was when I realized what the issue was. I beat myself up for too many years because I couldn't slow down. I didn't love getting massages or taking a slow-moving yoga class. I thought it was because I didn't know how to slow down or I was bad at it. It wasn't that I didn't know how or that I was bad at it. The issue is that I didn't WANT to slow down because when I slow down, I am overwhelmed with thoughts, feelings, and anxiety. 

A few years ago, I decided taking a slow restorative yoga class would be a good way to rest and get into my body. Up until this point, I had always taken power yoga or ashtanga yoga which was fast-moving and was more about burning calories and getting strong than getting into my body. I don't remember much about the class except it was painful. Not physically painful, but it was slow and quiet, and I DID NOT LIKE IT. I wanted to be someone who liked yoga or valued slowing down, but my anxiety would skyrocket every time I tried to do it. So I started making excuses not to go and eventually dropped out altogether. I didn't understand that I didn't like yoga because I didn't want to slow down. Instead, my Monger beat me up for not being the chill yoga person I wanted to be and told me to go to hot yoga, and my B.F.F. told me to skip this class; it was too easy wouldn't it be better to get some ice cream and watch some bad reality tv. . I needed to be challenging myself; I didn't have time to relax. It wasn't until years later that I figured out that it wasn't that I was weak or a loser or that I had too much to do and I didn't have time. The problem was I needed to build a new relationship with myself—one of trust and loyalty. 

As we move through these next three weeks, pay attention to what comes up for you around slowing down. What are your Monger messages about slowing down? What are the messages you received growing up about slowing down? 

Slowing down is like working out. After months or years of not working out, that first workout can cause us to be incredibly sore, so to the act of slowing down. Society usually supports our idea of working out, and society DOES NOT support the idea of slowing down, especially the idea that slowing down can increase productivity (that's crazy!!) We will get into that more in the upcoming spirals. Over time we realize thoughts and feelings aren't so scary, and being intentional and aware opens up your life in a way that checking off items on your to-do list can't touch.

In the two weeks of this spiral and in the spirals to come, We will be slowly looking at slowing down, our biases, and how we can rebuild a relationship with ourselves that makes slowing down not as painful. 

And if you have ANY thoughts, questions, or ah-ha's about the content—send me an email at questions@selfloyaltyschool.com or fill out the Q&A form. Ask Nancy Jane, and I will answer them in the next Q&A session. Q&A sessions will be recorded and appear on the Ask Nancy Jane podcast feed and in the member area on the last Tuesday of every month.

See you tomorrow!